McLabel
McDonalds have announced that they are to start putting nutritional information on to their packaging, a victory of sorts for Sue K and all the other anti-obesity campaigners around the world who have pushed for such a move over many years.
I have to generally welcome this development, seeing as it advances the cause of informed consent (which was of course at the core of my Open Source post last night).
But I can’t help but also be a little skeptical. Firstly, while sticking such info under the noses of people who have already passed under the golden arches may succeed in stopping them from super sizing their fries next time, the key issue is what makes them go there in the first place.
Yesterday, The Guardian in London ran ‘The onslaught’, by Jonathan Freedland, an excellent dissection of how food advertising gets them young.
The whole article is worth a read, but here’s a relevant passage:
The advertisers defend themselves vigorously. First, they say they’ve changed. Not only do they spend less than they once did, but the content of their ads has changed too. There is some truth to this. Visit the Kids Zone of the McDonald’s website and you’ll think you’ve stumbled across an old public information film. Ronald McDonald is bounding around a gym, extolling the virtues of exercise. Meanwhile, his animated pals sing this happy ditty:Don’t let your YumChums get glum
Put healthy stuff in your tum
Think about the things you eat
Don’t give us toooo many treats!
Run about, jump around and play
And you’ll feel yummy every day.
And not a quarterpounder to be seen.
For some, this is corporate social responsibility made real: McDonald’s emphasising that its product is a “treat”, only to be eaten in moderation as part of a balanced diet. For others, it’s an empty gesture. Sure, you can promote McDonald’s as if it’s a vegan spa, but once the kids are through the doors they’re going to be gulping down those fries. It’s reverse, sleight-of-hand advertising: you get all the credit for exalting virtue, when really you’re still selling sin.
Once again, as was the case with Open Source, we have to ask, would this corporation have made these changes if activists hadn’t been hassling them for years?
And then when the corporates and their cheerleaders make these concessions, they seem to expect those perpetual whinging resisters to shut up and go away.
But activists don’t shut up. Why?
Firstly because the job is never done. Many of my vegan friends have at one time or another actively protested against McDonalds because it sells meat. I generally supported them in their efforts, but I always had a nagging feeling that animal rights is far too narrow a front to attack McDs. After all, most people eat meat at home and if McDonalds was to become vegan tomorrow (unlikely I know), it would still be an inherently bad thing because it seeks to homogenise eating around the world and for all the other reasons pointed to in the McLibel case.
Which leads to the second reason activists never shut up - because the specific issue is just a symptom of the larger dysfunction in the society we live in. Yes, nice folx in the mainstream political game like the Greens must always welcome these moves publically. But such admissions have to be tempered by pointers to the larger issues.
We that in mind, I’ll leave you with the closing lines from The Guardian piece I quote above:
Rowland says poor kids will stop wanting Nike trainers only when they have another way to prove their own worth, another way to show they are valued. In other words, when society itself is changed. It raises a tricky question. Can we really protect children from consumerism run wild without changing the way the rest of us live? Is this a problem of the young - or a problem for all of us?
October 26th, 2005 at 3:09 pm
There is also the matter of whether franchises from foreign firms are good for a country.
A good discussion is at
http://www.bermudasun.org/issues/Sep20_96/re.html
Franchises cause a continual flow of money from one country to another fir very little, if any, gain. As the article referred to suggests, a very high price is paid for “know how” and brand loyalty.
What do others think?
October 26th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
It probably saves McDonalds money, as the labeling is required in the USA as well. Makes the product labeling interchangeable.
respectfully
BJ
October 26th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
“the key issue is what makes them go [to McDonalds] in the first place.”
The obvious answer would be that it’s cheap, tasty, and convenient — good value, in other words. There’s no need to ascribe magical manipulative powers to advertisers in this case. It’s not like Nike or something where the product is absurdly overpriced. It’s more like prostitution — moral puritans get their knickers in a twist when people start “selling sin” (what a revealing choice of phrase that was!). You disapprove of the choices made by the customers, and so try to explain their behaviour in terms of false consciousness. (It couldn’t be that these autonomous agents actually - *GASP* - want to “sin”!) But what if you’re just being prudish? What if the customers are fully informed already? Could it be that McDonalds is not so evil after all?
Further, I’m not sure why labelling is necessary, I mean, what kind of idiot doesn’t already know that fatty burgers and fries aren’t health foods?
“it would still be an inherently bad thing because it seeks to homogenise eating around the world”
You mean, only people who live in Western countries should be offered the convenience of Fast Foods. We must deprive all others of such choices, for the sake of retaining their “exotic” charm. (Mustn’t disappoint the tourists now!)
October 27th, 2005 at 5:55 am
Cheap, tasty and convenient?
Convenient, yes… it’s easy to see the enormous garish signs that deface so many towns.
Tasty: excessive salt and flavouring will appeal to those who know no better. Yes I have tried the product: soft sweet pappy buns and horrible
filling. Maybe my taste hasn’t been contaminated as much as some.
There are many local burger takeaways that make a far better, more flavoursome, nutritious product. There is nothing against fast foods as such.
What draws people to MacDungalds is the power of advertising: repeat the message again and again and “you can fool some of the people, some of the time”: children especially.
And of course MacD has the money to install playground equipment and other facilities which appeal to children.
The bottom line however is that one can do much better elsewhere.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:49 pm
Having playground facilities surely contributes to the value of the service, making it all the more worth visiting. It’s weird that you would try to spin this into a bad thing.
If you don’t like the taste, that’s fine, don’t go. Everyone should have that choice, of course. But don’t go around imposing your tastes on others. If they want to go to McD’s, then that’s their CHOICE. Again, it’s sheer dogma for you to ascribe their visits to “the power of advertising” rather than the autonomous choices of informed agents. Maybe they just plain like McD’s, didn’t you ever think of that?
October 27th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
What about the battery hens used in McDonalds “food”. Where is their choice? And what about the people and animals of the rain forest, do they have a choice when the forest is cut down and made into ranches for McDonalds? What about the Creator of the forest, however you perceive him/her/it. Does he/she choose to have it cut down so rich westerners can get fatter?
What about the workers at McDonalds who set the (low) standard of pay and conditions that have become the norm in the fast food industry as a whole. Where is their choice? And do parents really choose to have children badger the life out of them? If adults really knew the consequences of their choice, would they have continued to choose McDonalds? I know anyone who does not already know about obesity and fast foods is pretty stupid, but stupidity is not a crime and should not be punished.
October 28th, 2005 at 1:50 am
well said, kiore 1
McD’s is about so much more than nutritional deficiency; they have exploitational practice right across the board.
There is so much sugar, fat, food colouring, and preservatives that I hesitate to call it food.
One of my children has reacted so badly to additives that he is banned from McDonalds, which has gradually been accepted by grandparents, aunts & uncles as it is very obvious that if they give him a “treat” he turns into a very difficult child to manage almost immediately.
His younger cousins (3 pre-schoolers) are all McD avoiders, due to a better understanding of the perils of this particular fast-food gained by their parents when watching my child spin out of control. No, I’ve never said “I told you so”,
but iit takes herculean effort sometimes!
My biggest reason for limiting my kids access to McD’s was the discovery that even here in NZ, McD’s require their suppliers to hormone-feed and routinely use prophylactic antibiotic feeding, so that the food-chain builds up a concentration of these medications. So many of my son’s schoolfriends have regular weekly doses of McD’s and pre-adolescent weight problems, that I can’t fail to make a link between the two issues. What the long-term effects of growth hormone ingestion will be for this generation of children I don’t want to guess; obesity I feel is a symptom, not an outcome. Stupidity of the parents, perhaps, but the effect is on the growing bodies of the children.
katie